


Kinfolk

by ahimsabitches



Category: Oliver & Company (1988)
Genre: Gen, a mob wedding!, a wedding with a bunch of new york mafia at it, kinda., the research for my mafia OC and her family was a wild ride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 16:21:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17165240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches





	Kinfolk

The applause, and echoes of the applause, from Junior’s toast quieted down way before the lump in Bill’s throat subsided. He sipped his champagne, snugged his right arm around Angela’s shoulders, and realized the boy had turned out pretty damn well despite his father’s faults and fuckups. _I owe you one, Suze,_  he thought, and smiled at his son, who took his place at the table with his aunts. Junior smiled and nodded.

Dianna, seated to Bill’s left at their sweetheart table at the front of the giant ballroom, stood and pinged her champagne glass with her fork. He flicked a glance at Angela and squeezed her hand under the table. She wore an apprehensive smile that Bill completely understood. Dianna hadn’t given them any hints at all about what–or how– she’d toast them, which, given her big mouth, was a little unnerving on its own. However it happened, though, it would be done Salerno-style. Bill glanced at Dianna, standing only a few inches taller than he was sitting down.  _Hurricane_ Dianna.

The  _ting ting ting ting ting_  of the crystal cast a blanket of obedient silence over most of the party, but a bubble of hushed male voices remained in the back corner of the grand multi-chandeliered ballroom. Heads turned toward the disturbance. Dianna’s brows drew down. She placed her glass and the fork down on the table, hiked up her dress, and stepped onto her chair.

Angela sighed.

“‘EY  _VINNIE_ ,” Dianna barked at top New-York-accented volume, “ringin’ glasses means  _shut the fuck up_ , ya fuckin’ hammerhead!”

Laughter, mostly male, rippled through the seated crowd and the men at the table, all Dianna’s cousins, held up their arms to shield themselves from thrown napkin wads and half-eaten dinner rolls. Bill caught several eye rolls and disgusted lip curls from his sisters’ tables.

“You can dress them up,” Angela said with another resigned sigh. Bill chuckled.

Dianna dropped back down to the ground and cleared her throat. “All right. So. First I wanna say thanks t'everybody who came out. Even if I don’t like ya, one a’ these guys does–” Dianna gestured to Bill and Angela beside her, “–and they wouldn’t have invited ya if they didn’t wantcha here. I know 'cause I helped 'em make the list.” Quiet laughter rose and fell.  "Alla youse mean a lot to Bill or Ange or both of 'em, and on behalf of 'em, thanks for comin’ and makin’ 'em happy.“

"Aww,” Ange whispered beside him. Bill smiled up at Dianna, who wore a muted version of the full-faced grin that he’d come to love. Whichever longsuffering, sainted soul they’d hired to do the girls’ makeup and hair had done Dianna right. She usually kept her hair up in a severe knot at the back of her head, but tonight it flowed down her shoulders in graceful inky waves flecked with points of caught candlelight.

“For those'a you who don’t know, I’m Dianna Salerno, and I’m Ange and Bill’s partner.” She moved to stand between and behind them, and lay her hands on their shoulders. “It’s not exactly a… common type'a relationship, which is all the more reason t’ be grateful for it. I met Ange first–” she glanced down at Angela and they smiled at each other. Angela’s broad, joyous grin made her even more radiant. “–and we got t'be friends. I started workin’ for Bill only a couple weeks after that. Ange an’ I didn’t find out that we both knew Bill until, shit,  _months_ later.”

“Three or so,” Ange said, still beaming. For the millionth time that evening, of probably millions more, Bill traced the lines of Ange’s face, neck, tits, arms, waist, with his eyes, and damned if she didn’t get more beautiful every time he looked at her. Her hair, a few shades lighter than Dianna’s, sat atop her head in a gracefully upswept pile of curls. She’d chosen a deep red shade of lipstick that begged him to kiss her, and the way her long, thick lashes lay on her cheeks when she closed her eyes was nothing short of heartbreaking.

“By then,” Dianna continued, “I was pretty well infatuated wid my boss, who, in case the fellas in the room didn’t know, is a  _gigantic_ flirt.” Dianna squeezed his shoulder.

Laughter rippled again. Helen, sitting next to their mother, downed the rest of her wine in one swallow. Bill risked a glance at Dianna’s father, who reclined regally at the head of a table full of his nephews. If he had any feelings behind his hooded Italian eyes and jowled, drooping Don-Corelone face, he didn’t show them.

“ _Very_ long story short, what I thought was the end of any relationship we coulda had was just the beginning. And I owe most'a that to Ange.” She pulled Angela close, and Ange looped her arm around Dianna’s waist. Her hand landed close to Bill, who leaned down and kissed the little dip between her second and third knuckles. “She was–  _is_ – patient an’ forgiving an’ loving in a way that I didn’t know people could be. She don’t take no shit, though, which is necessary when you’re dealin’ wid the likes a’ Bill n’ me.”

Angela laughed, a quiet but musical sound. The earrings he’d given her– teardrop diamonds set in titanium and gold– danced on the ends of their hooks.

“Angela’s… well, she’s my best friend in the world. She’s there no matter what. If ya need her, all ya gotta do is ask. An sometimes, ya don’t even gotta do that. She just knows when you’re down n’ out or when ya need some advice or when the only thing left t’ do is build a pillow fort in the livin’ room an’ eat Cheez Wiz outta the can.”

A warm, heavy lump grew in Bill’s chest. He swallowed hard and glanced over at Angela, who gazed lovingly up at Dianna. The lump grew until it was painful. Tears pricked the back of Bill’s eyes and he blinked them away. 

A lifetime of being almost too handsome for his own good, plus a career path which required him to learn how to read people like tabloids, had given him the ability to detect, almost before they knew it themselves, when women were interested in him. With Ange, it had been a slow, sweet, maddening dance to the end of her contrariness, and there were moments when she’d shaken his belief in his own talent. But Dianna, sometimes as self-aware as a two-by-four, had made absolutely no effort to hide her attraction. No, lust; call it what it was. Which had amused and flattered him from the beginning, because of what it was, and because it was a complete one-eighty from how Angela had done him. So he’d flirted back; he’d toed the line, but never crossed it because he’d had Angela. And he’d be hung with his own tie before he’d fuck up another good thing like he’d fucked up what he’d had with Suze.

And Dianna, mostly, he guessed, out of respect for her friendship with Angela, had backed off him once she’d found out they were together. But he still caught her looking at him. The only time she’d let him out of her line of sight was when he went to the can. And he’d come back to find his coffee refreshed and a new cigar unwrapped and waiting on the ashtray. She’d tail him no matter where he’d go, even to places Tito hadn’t bothered, because  _“I gotta keep you safe, Boss. That’s my job.”_

And she had. She’d taken a bullet for him. 

“ _Because it’s my job_ ,” she’d slurred drowsily on the white hospital bed.

But, by then, even Angela could see that “ _Because it’s my job_ ” meant “ _I love you”_.

He and Ange had asked each other what to do several times over several weeks, had circled around a truth they weren’t sure it was okay to admit: that  _they_ were okay– if Dianna was okay– with welcoming her as a third partner. They’d chewed at that idea like the Dobes at their bones, then had put it to Di. Sykes chuckled to himself. He’d never forget that conversation and the outright puppyish confusion on Dianna’s face– she’d even cocked her head a little– when Angela had invited her in and told her she didn’t mind if Dianna fucked her boyfriend. “ _In fact_ ,” she’d said, “ _be my guest. The hour-long breaks three times a week are eating into my paycheck_.”

Bill reached out behind Dianna and brushed two fingers across Angela’s cheek. She leaned into his touch. His wedding band, broad and silvery titanium, glinted. 

“Ange is my rock,” Dianna continued, her booming voice wavering a bit, “an’ I’m the luckiest girl in the world to have her. T'have both of these guys.” Dianna hugged them both close, and Bill wrapped his big arm around Dianna below Ange’s. It lay across the swell of her ass, which was comparatively prominent under her dress. Dianna usually wore black cargo pants and a bulletproof vest that Bill felt sure had been stolen from some SWAT team or another. Layered on top of that was a double docker’s clutch which held two revolvers and a belt that held two pistols. A switchblade rested against her thigh in one pocket and she tucked a hunting knife into another. So palming a handful of Dianna’s ass or tits or anything, really, below the neck, was downright impossible with her normal kit. But tonight she wore a beautiful black dress that flattered the  _hell_ out of her figure, such as it was. 

Angela stood willowy and graceful, possessed of a classic, curving beauty that never failed to rev his engines. Dianna, shorter by a few inches than Angela, was built less like a movie star and more like a boxing champion. Her line of work, her family, her genetics, had given her no other choice. Broad shoulders sloped into a proud, full chest and strong arms, and though she had little in the way of a waist, her ass was tight and pert and when he could grab it, he did. Often. The dress she wore, an off-the-shoulder affair with a cocktail-length skirt that had just enough flirt to hide the thigh holster which cradled her smallest .22, hugged the rest of her to show off the curves– different from Angela’s but just as goddamn hot– that lent her a kind of wild, Amazonian beauty.

“I been told that you’re supposed t'tell jokes when ya toast at a wedding, and if it were anybody else’s,  _believe_ me, I would." 

Deep male laughter rumbled quietly from the Salerno side. Dianna’s father managed to crack a smile.

"But ah…there’s somethin’ else I wanna say that’s more important than that.”

Bill and Angela exchanged looks behind Dianna’s back. Angela looked like he felt: curious, a little confused, a little concerned.

“This ain’t a Salerno wedding, but it sure feels like it, don’t it?” Dianna grinned at her family, who took up a full two-thirds of the tables and seemed to take up more than that for the sheer  _bulk_ of their presence. They raised their glasses, scattering a few “Hell yeahs” and whoops  and whistles into the room.

“An’ that’s kinda my point,” Dianna continued. “Bill has his people.” She nodded at the four tables at which were seated his sisters, what family they could drag with them, his mother, and the four friends he felt generous enough–and that Dianna could vet fully enough– to invite. “But Ange doesn’t have much o’ hers." 

In fact, Angela had no blood relatives here at all. Her mother had died before Bill had met her; her father had bolted long ago, and there were no siblings or extended family, even grandparents, Ange had mentioned. She had invited a couple of friends from her job at the diner and the bartender from the bar, but they weren’t, by any stretch, family. Dianna’s father had offered to give Angela away, but Dianna herself had been the one to walk Ange down the aisle. That would give his sisters something to gossip about for  _years_.

"So, in light of that, I, uh, talked to my pops…” Dianna, her dark eyes alight with mischievous glee, glanced at her father, who was smiling broadly now. He nodded once: a stately dip of his chin. Suddenly, Bill understood. His heart swooped in his chest. He glanced at Angela, who still wore the same expression of mild confusion Dianna turned to her and took both of Angela’s hands in hers. “I talked to Pops an’, uh, since you welcomed me so graciously into your family, I wanted to welcome you into mine. If you’ll have us, of course.”

Angela’s mouth fell open. Hushed murmurs rippled through the seated crowd, but Bill barely heard them.  _Dianna, you sly fucking fox. No wonder you kept this mum._

Angela coughed a breathless laugh, tears welling in her eyes. “Oh, Di, I… thank you.  _Thank_  you. Yes.  _Yes_ , of  _course_ I’ll have you!  _All_ of you ridiculous goons!” Angela sprung up from her seat and threw her arms around Dianna’s neck. Dianna, laughing wildly, returned the hug with just as much ferocity. Bill’s eyes stung with tears again, and these he could not blink back.

The Salerno side of the room erupted into a cacophony of cheers and whoops. Dianna’s cousins and their families rose to their feet and threw whatever they had on hand into the air, including an infant and a half-full glass of champagne.

“Welcome to the family, Cousin Angela!” one of them said.

“You’re a Salerno now!” another shouted.

“Till death do us part!” another roared.

“Well don’t fuckin’ _jinx it_ ,” the cousin beside him snapped.

Angela and Dianna finally separated, both of them laughing and crying at once, and turned to Bill.

“I’m not sure which last name should go on the marriage license now,” Angela said, her voice warbly with tearful joy. 

Dianna waved her hand dismissively. “Hyphenate. Angela Salerno-Dvorak-Sykes.”

Bill and Angela fixed Dianna with identical sardonic hikes of one eyebrow.

“What?”

"It was a rhetorical question, Di,” Angela said. 

Bill admired his girls, both of them radiant with high color in their cheeks and ebullient glee in their eyes. Angela seemed to exist in an aura of light, surrounded by her billowy-sleek white dress and the sequined veil flowing down her back, the diamonds at her ears and throat arrowing spears of light across the room every time she moved. Dianna, no less beautiful for her black dress and simple chain around her neck (made of the same titanium as Bill and Angela’s wedding bands), instead seemed to magnify the joy teeming in the air around them just by existing. Bill hauled himself to his feet and opened his arms. Both girls nearly tackled him. He laughed and took a step back, surprised at how easily they’d almost bowled him over.

Dianna mumbled something into Bill’s tux. 

“What, Di?” Bill asked, leaning down.

“I said I  _fucking love youse two_!” she yelled up into his face. 

Bill cringed as her full-Italian-volume screech drilled into his head. “If I wasn’t deaf before I sure am now.”

“ _What_?” Angela yelled. “I can’t hear you over the sound of how much Dianna loves us!”

Dianna suddenly pulled away, swept up her champagne glass, and hopped up onto her chair. Facing the room, she held the glass aloft. “A  _toast_ ,” she bellowed over the milling cacophony, which quieted more quickly than it had before. “A fuckin toast to Bill Sykes and the newest member a’ two beautiful families, Angela Dvorak-Sykes-Salerno!”

“Or something like that!” Angela shouted, holding her own glass up.

 The crowd roared its hearty approval, and they drank.


End file.
